1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a playing card shuffler and dispenser comprising a housing, a storage container for a stack of shuffled playing cards arranged in the housing, the storage container defining an output opening for consecutively discharging a single one of the playing cards from the stack, and a playing card shuffling container for a stack of playing cards to be shuffled, the shuffling container being adjustable relative to the storage container. A drive for adjusting the shuffling container and a drive for operating a playing card ejector for pushing a respective one of the playing cards to be shuffled from the shuffling container into the storage container are controlled by a randomly operable logic control circuit or a randomizer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A playing card dispenser of this type has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,659,082. In this playing card dispenser, the shuffling card container is a rotary carousel which has radially extending compartments each receiving one playing card. An input hopper holds a stack of playing cards to be shuffled which are injected into the carousel compartments and fed into an output hopper for the shuffled playing cards. The single cards are randomly ejected into the output hopper. Such a playing card dispenser attains a high degree of shuffling of the cards, and it is practically impossible to figure out the sequence of cards in the shuffled stack even if a counting system is used. However, the use of a rotary carousel requires a large space. In addition, taking the cards out of the carousel in case of a malfunction is very inconvenient and time-consuming.